Media Watch

The #10 book in the county is Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann’s 2017 “gripping true-crime narrative,” per our starred review at the time, “which revisits a baffling and frightening—and relatively unknown—spree of murders occurring mostly in Oklahoma during the 1920s.” The crimes are more widely known now: the book has sold 1.2 million print copies so far. The Martin Scorsese–helmed film adaptation, which opened October 20, can only raise awareness.

You Oughta Be in Pictures

Zilot & Other Important Rhymes is the first children’s book by Better Call Saul actor Bob Odenkirk, writing with son Nate and wife Naomi; daughter Erin illustrates. “Silliness abounds throughout the 70-plus disparate poems,” per our review, “each featuring digitally colored pen illustrations that radiate enthusiastic quirkiness with whimsical scenes of monsters and contraptions.” The book debuts at #3 on our children’s fiction list. In a prepub discussion hosted by PW, Bob Odenkirk told Erin what their team-up meant to him: “I think that every parent dreams of collaborating with their kid, whether they’re putting together IKEA furniture, or making a poem come to life with an illustration.”

Cooking the Books

A trio of new cookbooks pepper our hardcover nonfiction list. At #9, Not That Fancy by Reba McEntire is an “entertaining mix of cookbook and memoir,” per our review. Dozens of stories punctuate the 60 recipes, which are sourced from family, friends, and the menu at McEntire’s Oklahoma restaurant, Reba’s Place. One notch below, Just Eat is the second cookbook from pop-country musician Jessie James Decker after 2020’s Just Feed Me (109K print copies sold in trade paperback). She likewise emphasizes folksy comfort: “Y’all know I’m a foodie,” she writes. And at #13, Molly Baz is back with More Is More, which our starred review called “an invigorating guide to having fun in the kitchen.”

NEW & NOTABLE
BE USEFUL
Arnold Schwarzenegger
#1 Hardcover Nonfiction,
#1 overall
“Schwarzenegger shares in this pragmatic and plainspoken guide the life lessons that fueled his success as a bodybuilder, actor, and governor of California from 2003 to 2011,” according to our review. “Readers will welcome his can-do approach and easily understood (if harder to implement) guidance.”

THE MYSTERIES
Bill Watterson and John Kascht
#1 Hardcover Fiction,
#2 overall
The reclusive Watterson, who retired his popular Calvin and Hobbes comic strip in 1995, makes a long-awaited return with what his publisher calls “a fable for grown-ups,” created with caricature artist Kascht over the course of several years of collaboration.